Month: February 2012

Will energy consumption stay private?

Will energy consumption stay private?:

A significant byproduct of the connection revolution is that things that were private because they were difficult to measure will no longer be private. When devices can talk to each other, the information rarely remains private. It’s not going to stop with energy, of course. Just about all our buying decisions are going to be shared, and that changes the marketers job.

In a world of horizontal marketing, where tribes are aware of what their members are up to, I think it’s going to happen quicker than most people expect.

[It’s not a question of “whether”, we already share this stuff a lot. It’s a question of how easy it’ll be to access it. Will you be notified if I look at your purchase history?]

Source: Seth’s Blog

Is Facebook really a good business?

Is Facebook really a good business?:

Facebook offers nothing that you can’t get elsewhere on the internet in terms of building an online presence, sharing with friends and family, and keeping up with people in an extended circle—it’s simply that right now, many people find them the most convenient way to do that. A long-term bet on Facebook is a bet that this will still be the case 15 years from now—or a bet that, 15 years from now, Facebook will have pivoted in a way that still keeps them just as relevant. That’s a very tall order.

Source: Coyote Tracks

Just Look at What You’ve Done

Fat Cyclist » Blog Archive » Just Look at What You’ve Done:

I love the fact that she’s wearing a 100 Miles of Nowhere t-shirt as she’s making this presentation. And I love even more how the kids react when they hear my name.

But what I love most is the fact that those kids, in that school, in that video, right now, have a better chance at a good life because of something we did. Something you did.

Here, take a look at a few of Katie’s pictures from this trip:

[Right then, she’s 100 Miles of Everywhere. (For those of you who don’t know, years and years ago (2008), Elden (Fatty) Nelson had a terrible idea: He bet a bunch of Fat Cyclist readers that he could ride his rollers for 100 miles. A raised a some money for charity. Next year he invited other’s to join. And it’s been going on in one form or another since. Last year a bunch of us road in a fairly small circle around the Kessina track. Anyway, it just seemed very ironic that in the midst of doing good and important work she wore a shirt that represents such folly. Of course, it also represents great joy and caring about others but in a silly sort of way. Very Elden like. Maybe it was perfect.)]

Neil Young: Piracy is the new radio

Neil Young was working with Apple on super high-def music format:

Young spoke at length about the lack of quality in today’s mainstream digital music formats, arguing that the “low-res world” of MP3s provide just 5% of the data present in the original studio recordings, paling in comparison to the quality of vinyl records back in the 70’s.

[If you watch the video, Neil Young said “Piracy is the new radio”. Interesting to hear from someone like him. I’ve long felt the same way since must of us toil in obscurity, and care more about being heard at all than the nonexistent lost sales. The fidelity thang has been long time issue for him, he’ cared about this as long as I can recall. I hope Apple doesn’t drop work on this altogether.]

SRAM Red 2012

SRAM Red 2012 – Full Details – BikeRadar:

SRAM have bucked the trend of 11-speed cassettes and electronic shifting for their wholly revamped 2012 Red group, preferring instead to stick with 10 rear cogs and conventional cable actuation. The new 1,739g claimed weight lops about 150g off of what was already a superlight package and major improvements to the brakes, derailleurs and drivetrain provide better stopping power, smoother front shifts and quieter running to accompany the updated ergonomics.

[Outside of the front der, which seems like a nice improvement, I’m impatiently waiting for the hydro stuff.]

[Update: It seems that the front der. is not compatible with the previous shifters. These companies think they’ve created a gravy train by obsoleting designs every few years, but considering the cost of a gruppo in the aftermarket, changes like this just make me feel burned.]

Missing refactoring…

Crazy, Heretical, and Awesome: The Way I Write Rails Apps | James on Software:

To decouple the logging from the creation of the database record, we’re going to use something called a service object. A service object is typically used to coordinate two or more objects; usually, the service object doesn’t have any logic of its own (simplified definition). We’re also going to use Dependency Injection so that we can mock everything out and make our tests awesomely fast (seconds not minutes).

[Again, a missing refactoring from the last major project…]

Source: @brynary

Say hello to Bootstrap 2.0

Say hello to Bootstrap 2.0:

Bootstrap 2 brings a plethora of changes and new features to the toolkit, many added as a result feedback from the community. In addition, much of our work was guided by our experiences of working on Twitter.com’s latest redesign where we created a flexible and durable design system. We took the same approach to Bootstrap 2 and came away with more features, better documentation, smarter default styling, and more.

[Allez!]

‘The Alan Lomax Collection From the American Folklife Center’

‘The Alan Lomax Collection From the American Folklife Center’:

Starting in the mid-1930s, when he made his first field recordings in the South,  Lomax was the foremost music folklorist in the United States. He was the first to record Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie, and much of what Americans have learned about folk and traditional music stems from his efforts, which were also directly responsible for the folk music and skiffle booms in the United States and Britain that shaped the pop-music revolution of the 1960s and beyond.

Lomax worked both in academic and popular circles, and increased awareness of traditional music by doing radio and television programs, organizing concerts and festivals, and writing books, articles and essays prodigiously. At a time when there was a strict divide between high and low in American culture, and Afro-American and hillbilly music were especially scorned, Lomax argued that such vernacular styles were America’s greatest contribution to music.

[Listen to a few cuts here. Great that all this material will be made available.]